28 thoughts on “I’m betting on a record (based on current Jaxa).”

1. As I said on the other thread, the temperature remains well above the freezing point of sea water. So it appears we have the combination of a storm which broke up the ice (and being already thin it was vulnerable to storm-related events) which in turn made it more vulnerable to melting and a prolonged period of “warm” temperatures.

   One of the consequences of the thinner ice maybe a larger variability from year to year both in minimum extent and in the annual pattern of ice loss.

2. Carrick–
   Yes. I saw that. So, presumably I should have been for less ice than projected. OTOH, the warm water effect may already be reflected in the current low extent… so…

   Last year when I was less distracted by “life” I sucked in lots more information to make a projection. By looking at lost of data it was sort of possible to see whether any the addition of more data told us much beyond what we knew based on the first things we grabbed. Having not followed closely enough, I don’t know if I it is merely the case that the warm water and the low current extent are related to the same thing. This might be the temperature you expect when the extent ends up this low!

   I don’t know if what I’m trying to say it’s clear. Maybe this analogy will help. It’s a bit like noticing an 4th grader who is 6’0″ weighs more than average and them “predicting” whether he will be the tallest kid in the class when each reaches 21. Is the kids weight higher than average merely a consequence of his height? or does it provide any predictive value beyond his being 6’0″? I can’t know without looking at data, and I sort of don’t know with the water temperature either.

   Last year if temperature data for this data had been available I might have sucked it in. I don’t have time today and bets close soon.

3. A record seems like a safe bet. According to the Daily NSIDC, SIE stood at 4.335 million sq km at 20 August. The record Sept Average is about 4.28. That day’s melt was 0.112.

4. Yep. It’s going to be a record.

5. I mangled the NSIDC link; it’s here. They have updated – 21 August is almost unchanged at 4.331.

6. Of course… you never know. It could start refreezing early…. 🙂

   I’ll be interested to see what everyone bet when the bets are revealed.

7. If the sea temperatures are well above freezing, then there’s no reason to think it will start refreezing early.

8. It is a curious thing, the dichotomy between these satellite-driven ice charts, and the reports from people on the spot. As an example, check out the Anchorage Ice Desk (National Weather Service) at http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/ice.php . Their first displayed chart “Sea Ice Analysis”, prepared 22 August, shows there is lots of sea ice to the near north of Alaska. This is gathered from on-site reports and sea-plane overflights. But JAXA shows very little. As I say, a curious thing.

9. 4.33 two days running – looks like we’ve bottomed already!

10. 4.33 two days running – looks like we’ve bottomed already!

    Wait for an uptick before imagining evidence we are near the bottom. We’ll have several wobbles up and down before we’ve bottomed out.

11. The “north pole” cam shows the melt ponds already freezing over. Of course, since the camera has drifted with the ice pack I don’t know what latitude the camera is actually at. Freezing from the pole outwards should have already started and is normal prior to the minimum. The lower the ice extent, however, the sooner that I’d expect the zone of freezing to intersect the outer boundary of the ice pack (all else being equal). Meaning that I think an early minimum is plausible.

12. MikeP–
    An early minimum is certainly plausible. But we practically always see some “wobbling” with upticks followed by down ticks before the minimum. I haven’t gone through all possible bits of data– but that’s generally what we see. Those expecting an early minimum should be aware that there will be days where the data indicate ‘no melt” for two days running before we actually hit the bottom. (Or at least, we likely will see this.)

13. MikeP Here’s the website.

    It appears to be at 83°N.

    We should be “bottoming out” soon (the rate of loss should start dropping). Unfortunately adding insult to injury current drift patterns are pushing ice down the side of Greenland, where it is likely contributing to melting and ice loss.

    It’s being Hoovered. 🙁

14. NZ Willy
    The NIC produces ice extent charts relying more on images than microwave products. As of today they show more extent than 2007 and holding on. See here by looking at August since 2006.
    http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/ice_extent_graphs/arctic_daily_ice_extent.html

    “Polar orbiting satellites are the only source of a complete look at the polar areas of the earth, since their orbits cross near the poles approximately every two hours with 12 to 13 orbits a day of useful visible data. This visible imagery can then be analyzed to detect the snow and ice fields and the difference in reflectivity of the snow and ice. By analyzing these areas each day, areas of cloud cover over a particular area of snow and ice can be kept to a minimum to allow a cloud free look at these regions. This chart can then be useful as a measure of the extent of snow and ice for any day during the year and it can also be compared to previous years for climatic studies.”
    http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/snow_ice.html

    “NIC charts are produced through the analyses of available in situ, remote sensing, and model data sources. They are generated primarily for mission planning and safety of navigation. NIC charts generally show more ice than do passive microwave derived sea ice concentrations, particularly in the summer when passive microwave algorithms tend to underestimate ice concentration. The record of sea ice concentration from the NIC series is believed to be more accurate than that from passive microwave sensors, especially from the mid-1990s on (see references at the end of this documentation), but it lacks the consistency of some passive microwave time series. ”

    http://nsidc.org/data/g02172.html

15. RonC–
    I can’t find a link to underlying data for the graph at http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/ice_extent_graphs/arctic_daily_ice_extent.html . It looks like the final data point endds 8/15. Much of the melting on Jaxa is recent. So I’m not sure what to make of that.

16. lucia
    Maybe this is what you want.
    http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/products_on_demand.html
    Daily ice extent up to Aug. 22

17. Notice also that the extent bottomed Aug. 17, and recovered strongly.

18. RonC–
    The link you gave me sent to me to a graphic of an ice map. It seems to provide one bazillion options to look at a variety of things. But I’m not seeing how to get a daily ice extent value. What should I do to find any sort of graphic or data that might permit me to “Notice also that the extent bottomed Aug. 17, and recovered strongly.”

19. Lucia / RonC,

    Digging down a bit, the data appears to come from the same source as MASIE. Since the 15/8 datapoint on the NIC site, showing 5.8million Sq. K, MASIE rapidly decreased to 5.0million Sq. K on 21/8 but went back up to 5.3 yesterday.

20. Paul S– If I recall correctly from last summer, MASIE is a more volatile than the other records. They only get partial coverage each day (or something like that.) If so, the volatility comes from slightly different coverage on each day. Over all, it’s pretty good, but you get a bit more “noise” around the correct value. Do you know?

21. Lucia,

    Sounds like you know more than me, so I can’t help there. The fact that it suddenly jumped up 0.3million Sq. K suggests you’re right on the volatility point – if you look at the map for 21/8 and 22/8(large .png files) it looks like a large mass of ice suddenly appeared from nowhere. I’ve found a weekly sea ice extent chart on the NIC site, which suggests it generally tracks closely with other sea ice extent products

22. Lucia
    I was referring to the >8/10 sq.km. in the Arctic Daily box on the screen. In the Tools box one can select other dates to get other statistics. I agree that a table would be easier to work with, but I haven’t found one other than the MASIE doc referred to above.

23. Paul S– I might be wrong. People at Neven’s might know more. Some there seem to strike me as over-analyzing day-to-day changes. But the obsessed do tend to know how each metric is measured.

    My impression was that MASIE was very good for seeing how ice locations might have shifted and so on. But at any given time the area covered might not be 100%. So, as a global metric is was noisy. But I might be totally wrong on this.

24. Thanks to Ron C. for the link, indeed, http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/products_on_demand.html (select “Arctic Daily”) shows wa-a-a-ay more Alaska ice than all the me-too-ing satellite maps, consistent with the NWS Anchorage Ice Desk, http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/ice.php . I can’t help but be skeptical that the satellite mappers have me-tooed eachother into calibrating their ice detections far too low.

25. On Aug 23 the 8/10ths ice coverage was 4.63 million sq. km. The 24th gives us 3.54 million sq. km. 1.09 sq. km. gone in one day.

26. Lucia, (comment 102021)
    “I can’t find a link to underlying data for the graph at http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pro…..xtent.html . It looks like the final data point endds 8/15. Much of the melting on Jaxa is recent. So I’m not sure what to make of that.”
    Although that graph says it shows daily figures, it does only seem to show data to the 15th. Maybe it’s related to the scale. If you select “August” only, instead of “All”, you do get more recent daily figures.

27. My script is now predicting 3.280852.

28. Lucia, I told you that there was a lot of heat in the Northern Hemisphere. 😉

    I have to admit though that I’m surprised by the rate of ice melt.

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